The Saint Chamond off Cornwall’s north coast has more steam trains on it than any other wreck I know. Some records list 5 trains carried as deck cargo, on my dive I counted 6, and local skipper Dougie Wright is confident there are at least 7. I compared notes with him after my dive and know where I missed one, but more of that later.
The St Chamond is another U-boat victim of the First World War, torpedoed and sunk just 1.5 miles off St Ives on 30 April 1918.
As I descended the shot line, my first sight of the wreck was a train lying on its left side with the shot line draped over it. It is not really surprising that the mechanical parts of a steam train bear much similarity to the equivalent parts of a steamship. A cylindrical boiler containing the fire box and lots of hollow tubes, with pistons driving the wheels rather than a propeller shaft. In the case of the trains on the St Chamond there are 4 large driving wheels on each side and two pairs of smaller wheels forward of the drive wheels.
The main body of the wreck lies a few metres away from the chassis of this train, largely flattened to the seabed with just a few scraps of hull rising upwards. Cargo in this area is mainly steel hoop "tyres" for the train wheels and couplings for the main cargo of pipes. The rest of the cargo seems to have comprised largely of steel pipe, clusters of which can be found all over the wreck.
Towards the centre of the ship the propeller shaft lies exposed, the only traces of the tunnel being a few curved ribs of steel. It is hard to tell on a wreck this broken, but my impression is that the shaft has shifted slightly off the centreline to port.
Moving forward, the remains of a triple expansion steam engine are spread to starboard from the crank.
Further forward along the centre line of the ship is a large pile of steel pipes. Skirting this mountain to port, another steam train lies on its side, this time within the outline of the St Chamond’s hull.
The St Chamond was fitted with two boilers. One of these is standing upright just off the port side of the wreck, however I could find no sign of the other boiler. At just 20 to 24 metres deep and exposed to the full force of Atlantic storms, it could easily have been rolled well clear of the wreck, or broken to scraps and buried.
Continuing to follow the port side of the wreck forwards, the bow is marked by a pile of anchor chain and a pair of anchors still tight in their hawse pipes, the hull having disintegrated about them.
The anchor winch has fallen forward and can be found a few metres off the tip of the bow and slightly to starboard. This is the shallower end of the wreck, being about 20 metres deep at low water.
Following the starboard side of the wreck back, a steel dome has me puzzled. I thought at first that it could have been from the front of one of the trains, but is a bit big for that. It is also a bit big for the remains of a condenser casing left here when the non-ferrous metals on the wreck were salvaged, and perhaps a bit robust for a simple water tank. Maybe it is just the remains of an item of cargo.
Just further back are a pair of trains. The chassis of a train standing upright with the boiler completely gone, with a second train resting on one side alongside it. It is here that Dougie Wright has seen a third train outside of and hidden behind this pair from the point of view of my sketch. Either I missed this train when diving the St Chamond or maybe it has been broken up or shifted away from the wreck by a storm since he last dived the wreck several years previously.
Continuing aft on the starboard side, another small pile of steel pipe rests approximately level with the remains of the engine.
A fifth train lies pointing aft, reasonably intact but tipped just outside of the outline of the hull.
Inside of this, a pair of broken winches lie along what I would consider to be the centre line of the ship. As I mentioned earlier, I think that the propeller shaft has shifted slightly off the centre line to port.
The last train lies a little further aft, in a similar orientation to the previous train, giving a total of at least 6 trains from my counting and 7 trains from Dougie’s experience, much more comprehensive than mine, but a few years since he last dived the wreck. Maybe the original manifest was wrong or badly written, or maybe they found room to load a couple of extra trains at the last minute. Either way, I am confident there are more than the recorded 5 trains.
The wreck soon fizzles out with another small pile of steel pipe from the cargo. There are a few scraps of wreckage spread out aft of this point across a pebbled seabed with some rocky ridges at a low-water depth of 24 metres.
The remains of the stern are actually well off to starboard. A section of propeller shaft projects from a small “V” section of the keel leading to a steel propeller partly buried in the seabed. Just aft of this, the remains of the rudder rest on the seabed.